Looking At You And Seeing Green

Today’s daily prompt about jealousy isn’t going to inspire in me the kind of creative outlet that I use this blog for, and so I’m going to shift the topic a little bit and revisit my relationship with the color “Green.”

When I was a child, I used to “see” people as colors. Not that they would literally be rainbow color, or like, have an aura or anything, but I think I associated certain colors with certain characteristics, and I would see the dominant characteristic of their personality as that color.

My own color was this beautiful complex rich velvety red, a red in my imagination, like one I’ve never seen before. Too red for burgundy, too brown-purple for apple, a red like a velvet cloth that shifted and rippled according to forces around it.

I never knew anyone green, though. And for as much as I love color, I had, historically, a tumultuous relationship with green. It wasn’t blue – strong and solid, and it wasn’t yellow – bright and wide-open. Green had bad breath and dark corners with nothing interesting in them.

This days, I consider it the foundation of any respectable color palette and appreciate it for soft humor and long-standingness. I miss, though, seeing people as colors.